Your not a monkey, or a least I hope not.
There was a time, and it is still happening, that tubing companies were pushing steel tubsets a little too far in order to keep up with the weight savings that aluminum represented. In the process they sacrificed the things that we love about steel tube sets, mainly reliability. Genius was one of these. Does this mean your bike will break, of course not. Genius did have this differential butting that someone spoke of before and it was difficult to work with correctly, was not very resistant to crashing and just didn't seem to have the reliability that it should. They have since discontinued these type of tube sets. Now we have something called Ultra Foco. I don't know what I thing of this stuff either. I have not used it to date and probably won't anytime soon because until it has some time to prove itself I would find it foolish to build a frame out of it. It is interesting to note that Columbus tubesets got very light around 97(nemo) and then miraculously gained some weight again until Ultra foco which I still think is a few grams heavier. Did Columbus realized that they had pushed the limit too far? Also about the only difference between Foco and Ultra Foco is that they have essentially removed the butted portions. The butting differential is .5-.38-.5 Not really a problem anymore with a good TIG welder but you still have to wonder about crash resistance. Personally I think that oversized tubes for larger and heavier rider have been a really improvement in steel but I still stick with tried and true straight butts, mostly True Temper for main tubes and Columbus Round oval Round stays and tapers seat stays. In my opinion all the tubing companies make great tubes if you choose them correctly, so tubing is really low on my overall importance of what makes a good frame.
Sincerely,
David Bohm
So, why am I a monkey? Seriously, from your perspective as a long time builder of steel what do you think of the newer offerings? What would you avoid as a consumer or builder???
Mike "Monkey, not Monkeyman" Wilkinson
Parker,